Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A sticky substance that is smeared on branches or twigs to capture small birds.
- noun Something that captures or ensnares.
- transitive verb To smear with birdlime.
- transitive verb To catch with or as if with birdlime.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A viscous substance prepared from the inner bark of the holly, Ilex Aquifolium, used for entangling small birds in order to capture them, twigs being smeared with it at places where birds resort or are likely to alight.
- To smear with birdlime.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An extremely adhesive viscid substance, usually made of the middle bark of the holly, by boiling, fermenting, and cleansing it. When a twig is smeared with this substance it will hold small birds which may light upon it. Hence: Anything which insnares.
- transitive verb To smear with birdlime; to catch with birdlime; to insnare.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
sticky substance smeared on branches to catchbirds . - noun rhyming slang
Time ; a jail term. - verb transitive to add birdlime to
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb spread birdlime on branches to catch birds
- noun a sticky adhesive that is smeared on small branches to capture small birds
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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It is asserted by some to possess properties fully equal to those of the I. aquifolium of Europe, the inner bark of which also yields a viscid substance called birdlime; its leaves are esteemed as a diaphoretic in the form of infusion; employed in catarrh, pleurisy, small-pox, etc.
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The common kind of birdlime readily loses its tenacious quality when long exposed to the air, and particularly when subjected to moisture; but it may be rendered capable of sustaining the action of water by the following
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_Lime-twigs_ = snares; in allusion to the practice of catching birds by means of twigs smeared with a viscous substance (called on that account 'birdlime').
Milton's Comus John Milton 1641
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a magnifying-glass, it will be seen that its threads are closely studded with minute globules of gum, which is so sticky that flies caught in the web are held in this kind of birdlime until the spider is able to spring upon them.
Wild Nature Won By Kindness Elizabeth Brightwen
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No, no, what you want to smear on your head is: birdlime.
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And I went with him down to the lovely river, and then he said to me, ‘Look and see how I do it, and then you’ll know: I put this birdlime round this twig, and then I go here,’ he said, ‘and hide away under a bush; and presently clever
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Every day boys were to be seen walking along the roads and by the hedges and ditches, catching dragonflies with birdlime.
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Iland bringeth foorth all sorts of fruits, as Canaria doth: and also all the other Ilands in generall bring foorth shrubs or bushes, out of the which issueth a iuice as white as milke, which after a while that it hath come out waxeth thicke, and is exceeding good birdlime, the bush is called Taybayba.
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation 2003
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Sometimes they catch them with a viscous birdlime that paralyses their movements.
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I may say, too, it furnished fowl and other creatures as dainties, in producing mistletoe for birdlime to ensnare them.
The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Plutarch 2003
yarb commented on the word birdlime
Citation on stagefinch.
September 30, 2008